Ramping Up for a Fall to Remember

Posted on Sep. 18, 2012

Things are speeding up around the En Masse office! We’re working on making this fall a season that TERA players won’t forget, and part of that effort is transforming ourselves to be quicker to react to our players and our game. By constantly tweaking things we do, we give players a better experience. For example, we just released the Argon Queen update, our first major content patch. In it, we introduced several new endgame instances and the much-heralded battlegrounds. And that’s just the start of our rapid-fire progress.

The weeks since the Argon Queen update have been especially jam-packed: everything from Bluehole Studio visits and weeklong meetings to in-game content plans, events, and more. In time-honored producer tradition, I always allude to these busy plans but never reveal what we’re working on. Let me go against that tradition this time and just tell you what we’re working on.

More Events with More Variety

We’re increasing the frequency and broadening the types of events we run, all aimed at giving TERA players more of what they want. We’ll be running several different events over the next few months; they fall into three categories.

Our staff here at En Masse will do small-scale flash events that engage each server’s players on a personal level. While I don’t want to give away all our plans, expect on-the-spot organized events like triathlon races, scavenger hunts, trivia, and so on.

We’ll also have weekend TERA-wide events that focus on particular groups of players or content. These events offer everything from increased drop rates for specific instances (changing every weekend) to increased battleground points and rewards just for logging in. Every event weekend, we’ll have a new way to get players experiencing TERA’s content and forming new groups and communities.

Finally, we’ve got large-scale seasonal events. First is a Halloween event with several quest lines, some fun costumes (and a costume ball), and even a Halloween-specific instance. More details on that later, but I’m pumped to play it. Further down the road, look for a battleground tournament and a large winter event.

Adding Content to TERA

Content? We’ve got that coming too! Crafting quests are coming back next week, the long-awaited berserker patch will arrive shortly after that, and we’re rebalancing instances and adding new achievements. We’re also making significant changes to enchanting based on player feedback—changes we’ll roll out over the course of a few builds later this fall (more specifics on this as we confirm changes). Another large content update (similar in size to Argon Queen) is in the works, but if I go into any more detail, I may not make it back for the next producer letter.

We’ve also been working closely with BHS on a few larger projects related to TERA—projects we plan to bring to you this year as well. I will be updating you regularly on these as we make more headway, get certain plans in place...and I’m allowed to talk about them.

I see a lot of exciting things on the horizon for TERA, and everyone in the office is hard at work bringing that horizon closer, not only because we’re committed to TERA, but also because we’re gamers. Nothing’s more exciting than seeing TERA evolve and become even better.